@TF, if you read carefully, you'll notice that the man who poured the cologne on the magician and set it on fire and the people who launched the black magic accusations are not the same people. This is also clarified in some posts of this forum thread.

The show, Acercate a Los Astros, is an Astrology/Psychic/Numerology show. The host, Franklin Barazarte, is the producer. He personally burned Wayne. Franklin's wife, Adriana Azzi is the normal host, but she was out of town. The voodoo charges, and the suggestion that this was God's revenge, were made against the the show in general, and the Curiosidades team that were on the show (BJ Bueno, Wayne and Fran) in particular, by Domngo Bautista, host of the television program Super Revista.

As far as I can tell, it is unclear why the TV host did what he did. But apparently some people in the Dominican Republic strongly believe in Voodoo. From the same forum thread :

In Samana (same island...Dominican Republic) a few years ago, during holidays...

The owner of an hotel and the local magician asked me to perform the Steve Fearson floating cigarette in his discotheque. I did

Then, about 10 guys left their chairs, towards me. The owner told me not to move. The local magician had to explain to the group that it was THROUGH ME, thanks to my powers (I remember he used the formula "white great magician") that he could do his daily show on stage !!!!As a precaution !

The following day, the owner told me that in fact, these clients wanted to ask me to "give" them the power to do the same thing with their own cigarettes...but as he also said...we never know.

Local mayor Miodrag Vujetic admitted: "People are worried, everybody knows the legend of this vampire and the thought that he is now homeless and looking for somewhere else and possibly other victims is terrifying people. We are all frightened."

He added that it was all very well for people who didn't live in the area to laugh at their fears but he said nobody in the region was in any doubt that vampires do exist.

"We are 99.999 percent certain it was suicide," a Hamburg police spokeswoman told The Local.

"There is no other explanation; no other motive and no other evidence."

Detectives have worked out that there was enough of an opening in the sack between the cable ties for Sattler to get an arm out and shoot himself so that afterwards the gun would fall to the ground. He would have had to have done this while perched on the edge of a bridge or jetty to ensure falling into the water.

Ach! Yes, the textual reference should have been 196,833. Although the snowflake in Planetary is a reference to the Monster group, a mathematical object that can be represented in a minimum of 196,882 dimensions.

News of a pioneering sex change operation, one of the first involving both surgery and hormone therapy, was announced in 1952 - exactly 60 years ago this weekend."Ex-GI becomes blonde beauty!" screamed one headline as newspapers in the United States broke the news.A quiet boy from New York, George Jorgensen, shocked a nation by returning from a trip to Denmark transformed into the glamorous Christine.

Sex changes in the UK: • 42 - Median age at time of operation • 11% - Rate of rise year on year • 80% of sex changes are male to female

Google is running some kind of bullshit scam on their home page, telling everyone to click through to "Tell the world's governments you support a free and open internet". Clicking leads you to a big world map with names and faces popping up randomly, and there's a counter at the bottom supposedly keeping track of everyone who supports a free internet (and how does Google know the name of everyone who's logging in, and what they look like?) Google claims the world's governments are secretly meeting this month to discuss censoring the internet (giving no details whatsoever), and that you need to 'add your voice' to keep this from happening.

Except that every time you log into the page, the counter resets to about 714,000 and then starts rapidly counting upward. What's more, there's a propaganda video on a link at the bottom of the page, which is just a bunch of random strangers popping up to tell you they support a free and open internet.

Denis Duthie was celebrating his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary with drinks when his world suddenly went dark. As Stuff.co.nz reported, following a four-hour drinking spree — involving vodka on ice and whiskey — at his home on New Zealand‘s North Island, the 65-year-old chef tutor discovered he had gone blind.

Doctors suspected that Duthie was suffering from formaldehyde poisoning, which occurs when methanol — a common byproduct of home-brewed alcoholic beverages — metabolizes into formaldehyde, the Herald reported. In his case, they believed that the alcohol he had ingestedreacted with the five medications he was taking to manage his diabetes, stuff.co.nz reported. Treatment for this type of poisoning involves administering ethanol, which is commonly found in alcoholic beverages and prevents the formation of the harmful compound.

There was just one problem: the hospital lacked enough ethanol to serve as an effective antidote. All hope was not lost for Duthie, though, thanks to the medical staff’s decision to improvise. They sent the hospital’s registrar to purchase a $55 bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey from a local liquor store, and Duthie received a whiskey drip to his stomach through a tube routed first through his nose, the Herald reported.

Five days later, Duthie awoke in the intensive care unit with his sight restored, feeling “good as gold.” Although he lost 14 kg (almost 31 pounds) in the hospital, he told the Herald that he was impressed with the creative cure.

This Slashdot commenter has an angle on why the chemical (perchlorate) detected might be interesting. But, since this isn't even a new discovery for Mars (perchlorate had already been detected by Phoenix, and other findings by Spirit/Opportunity), if this is the "big news" we were teased with, somebody needs a slap.

@wood - I have this image of the guy they sent out reaching for the Red Label, then deciding to spring for the Black.